BIOGRAPHY

Christopher Libertino is an award winning film composer, recording artist and guitarist. He received his BA in Music from Harvard University in 1991 and undertook film scoring studies at Berklee School of Music. With over 50 scores to his credit, he has reached a worldwide audience of millions with such films as The Wormhole (2002 Academy Award Gold Medal), Repetition Compulsion (1999 Emmy Nomination) and Speak (2004 Sundance Feature). His unique brand of literate, atmospheric art rock is often featured alongside his scoring work as in such films as The Hill and The Gravekeeper. As a guitarist, Christopher’s distinctive effects based sound can be heard on numerous remixes (Gwen Stefani, Roxy Music and Duran Duran) as well as in the scores for 28 Days Later, Aeon Flux, Underworld, and Six Feet Under.

His scores run the gamut from hushed atmospherics to Avant-Garde clatter, from chaotic atonal clusters to unabashed lyricism, from apocalyptic soundscapes to lush orchestral Romanticism. Although his musical style must be conformed to the film at hand, Christopher’s overall approach always draws on a deep understanding of dramatic language and psychology to uncover and highlight the emotional core of the material. He also meticulously orchestrates every note of his compositions, deploying orchestral colors, sophisticated sound design, cutting edge electronics and offbeat and exotic instruments in bold and unusual combinations.

Running parallel to his film work, Christopher has maintained his steadfast love for composing and recording challenging pop music. He has also forged a unique effects based approach to textural electronic guitar. His signature sound was made available to other composers when Big Fish Audio commissioned Alien Guitars: a two-volume set of guitar samples that Christopher created with David Siskovic. These strange and beautiful sounds have found their way into projects as diverse as the score for CSI: Miami and Annie Lennox’s album, Bare. His altered guitar work serves as a cornerstone of his own album work – Epitaph, Caprice, Unspoken and Traveller – and as a featured element in the New York Indie Electro Pop bands Sound Vision and Disco Pusher.

QUOTES

"Christopher Libertino is an electric guitar wizard who has experimented a great deal with guitar sounds over the years, and that background proves to be the perfect match for this story. The film’s characters lives in a pop-orientated world and that is obviously effectively underlined by electric guitars and rock rhythms, but the most important quality of Libertino’s guitar-driven score is that it works on two levels: it evokes the darkness of the story, but also the sadness and reflective qualities of the film itself. Using the full emotional range of the guitar, Libertino creates a moving – and at times, disturbing and intense in a way that reminds me of Elliot Goldenthal’s Heat score – soundscape for the story to grow in."
- Mikael Carlsson;Music from the Movies on Speak.

"She gets great help from Christopher Libertino's sensitive score and Peter C. Frank's wonderful editing, which merges the character's interior and exterior worlds beautifully -- a great feat, given that the two are practically symbiotic throughout the movie."- Marilyn Moss;The Hollywood Reporter on Speak

"There's a pleasing gentleness to Traveller that is refreshing in that it isn't trying to be brash or limelight stealing. It's just gently and quietly what it is. Every element of this production — sleeve design included — was done by Christopher himself and, production-wise, it almost feels like he's been doing it in secret; it's an album of almost extreme subtlety, with vocals kept very much in the background and the sounds chosen being muted and soft. Overall, this is a tremendously successful approach and, unusually, by the end you don't feel the need for a bigger, more attention-grabbing track."- Neal McLeod;Sound on Sound Magazine on
Traveller

"Libertino’s electric guitar work and immaculate studio sound is completely original and quite inventive. Bowie, Eno and Gabriel fans could do a lot worse than spending some time with Libertino’s progressive sounding, nocturnal emissions."- Robert Steven Silverstein;Music Web Express on Traveller

"Christopher's goal for the album was to synthesize the wide-screen cinematic sounds of his film writing with evocative lyrics and musical styles that include electronica, industrial, alternative and ambient music and with hints of African, Caribbean and Middle Eastern music as well. I guess he succeeded very well in his goal because that's just what I heard almost fifty minutes long on a debut on which he can be very proud of. Highly recommended to those who enjoy the music made by the already mentioned acts such as Peter Gabriel, David Sylvian, Kate Bush, Thomas Dolby, David Bowie, Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry!"- Henri Strik;Background Magazine on Traveller

"If a few more guitarists coaxed sounds like these out of their instruments, the history of rock and roll might have been very different."- Nigel Lord;MusicTech Magazine

"Picture a multi-legged monster traipsing across an alien landscape. Or pterodactyls flying off into a crimson sunset. Or Wile E. Coyote getting electrocuted. These are a few of the images that form in my mind upon hearing some of the segments on Alien Guitars."- Keyboard Magazine; Review of Alien Guitars Volume 1